>>As we’ve noted before, as much as hotels and online travel agencies may not necessarily love one another, they certainly need each other. Their current love-hate relationship will certainly change, however, if and when other players like Airbnb or Google become bigger players in the hotel booking space: Hotel CEOs Reveal Strategies for Expedia, Google and Airbnb

>>Many event tech providers have created platforms in recent years to offer planners a set of tools with unified access to data. As the industry embraces analytics and artificial intelligence, providing useful insights that empower decision makers, platforms will likely take on bigger importance: Event Tech Providers Are Ready for a Data Revolution

>>A year from now — or perhaps sooner — we wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear Expedia executives admit that hotels’ direct-booking campaigns were having more of an adverse impact than the company initially articulated. Hotels have taken back some control from Expedia, and its shift toward independent hotels has far-reaching implications: Expedia Acknowledges a New Balance of Power With Hotels in Direct Booking Challenge